It's a tough time for public sculpture in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

In July, vandals in the city 50 miles west of Boston decapitated a sculpture of a woman by artist Lisa Simonds. That followed a June 13 attack on no fewer than five other works on June 13—the night before the exhibition in Worcester's Elm Park was scheduled to open, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

S Mark Gubb is an artist working across a range of media incorporating sculpture, video, sound, installation and performance. Here he gives his top 5 tips for making it in the visual arts. Particularly useful for recent graduates but invaluable, as a reminder, to those of you who are already established.

1, First, and most important, always focus on the art. I'm putting this first as it's actually the most difficult to maintain and I often find myself not heeding my own advice. There's admin to do, things to apply for, lack of money, and all that TV and tea won't watch or drink themselves. Try and find strategies that keep you engaged in making, even when you have little time or money – it may be sketching, collage, taking pictures/shooting videos on your phone – simple, quick, easy, satisfying ways of being creative every day, even when your situation doesn't seem to want you to be. A day with 5 minutes of making in it is always better than one with none.

2, Network, network, network. This word still has a lingering stench of the 80s, attached to power-dressing and cut-throat professional manoeuvring, but all it actually means is getting out and talking to like-minded people. You need to be part of your professional community. You can be the best artist in the world, but no-one is looking for you. Get out and about, see shows, have drinks, talk to other artists, talk to curators. Once someone has seen your face and spoken actual words to you, you exist. You're no longer just a set of pixels in a monthly mail-out or on an exhibition flyer. Building a peer and professional network runs a very close second to making work in terms of importance for any sort of future sustainability or sanity.

3, Always think of the wider context for your practice. Cultural lines are more blurred than ever. You may paint, you may sculpt, you may make videos, whatever, and whilst the creation and production of your work may seem like a solitary pursuit, it has a context in the world. It may be relevant to a particular subculture or group, it may have specific relevance to a geographic location or non-art-based activity. Think around your practice and who might be interested in it. Of course your primary focus should remain on getting your work seen within an art context, but this expanded field of vision will be very useful when you come to write funding applications, or develop projects or just fancy taking a sideways step for a short while.

4, Don't worry about the other things you're doing to make money. It doesn't matter if they're not directly involved in the arts. Everyone has to make money to live, so do it however you can. Great if you can get a job in your local arts centre but, if not, work in the local call centre instead. In many ways having a totally unrelated job can help you focus on what you really want to be doing with your life.

5, Be nice. This should probably be at the top of the list. No-one wants to be friends with, or give a show to, or give support to, or give funding to, someone who isn't nice. Nice is a really bad word, but you get what I mean. Be yourself, be helpful and be proactive. (But if someone crosses you, bear a grudge forever. Not really). Be nice.

Everyone sees something different in clouds, but people living near Auckland, New Zealand, are seeing only one thing: male genitalia.

Sculptor Gregor Kregar created “Transit Cloud" an aluminum mesh sculpture that hangs on the facade of a train station, eight meters above ground in the town of New Lynn. Meant to convey a cloudily form, residents of the working class area are complaining that the sculpture is an obvious phallic symbol. They do not want it in their town, basically, and certainly don't want their children playing in and around it. Or that is what they are telling local media and politicians.

One to watch, Bobby Sayers forces us to question the value, function and beauty of our everyday environment. Sayers uses sculpture, photography, curation and participatory performance as a means of translating his ideas. Though elements of his practice seem disparate, they are all connected through his philosophy of highlighting beauty within the ‘now’.

Sayers is best known for his site-specific sculpture and photography, such as Nottingham Colours, where he draws our attention to the simple beauty of the urban landscape, asking the viewer to reconsider the images taken around each gallery he exhibits. Using sculptural pins to highlight certain elements within each of the images, he then extracts forms and shapes, transforming them into large, colourful, shiny and textural objects that abstract the original form; this allows the viewer to reinvent their function as they are removed from their original context.

During a recent residency in Czech Republic, Sayers produced a one-on-one spoken performance, Krásné Svět (Beautiful World), during which he gave away small sculptures that functioned simultaneously as viewing portals and decorative necklaces, allowing each participant to see ‘beauty’ as they look through them.

Sayers seems to hunt for function and beauty not only within landscapes but also within his position as an artist and the systems of art he is involved in. A recent project that questions these concepts is Weather Gallery, a small portable pop-up gallery that fits into a trolley bag, in which the artist acts as director, curator and invigilator. Speaking to us, Sayers described how he has been experimenting with this alternative gallery, “Weather Gallery focuses on an informal, highly connected and formative experience for the audience, as the invigilator I perform the task of relating and engaging with both the works and the audience.”

Bobby Sayers is an artist and curator based in London. He graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA in Fine Art. Recently completed a residency as part of the Wild Project in Czech Republic, which has 3 shows to follow in 2014; these will take place in Motorcade/Flash Parade in Bristol, Primary in Nottingham and Xero, Kline & Coma in London. Currently he is touring Czech Republic working on a series of artist workshops.

Rachel Wrigley works with various forms of documentation including photographs and casted objects. By manipulating, deconstructing and distorting the architecture and objects that are within the documents, she attempts to invent new forms, positioning them between the photographic two dimensional image and the three dimensional realm.

Her playful exploration of paper and its potential as a sculptural material, allows her to re-imagine the way we create spaces and household objects. Her visually tactile paper casts focus on the membrane of an object; lifting off the skin like some kind of residual coating. These delicate works muffle the object by subtly changing its form.

Wrigley provides a distorted version of reality by investigating space as a moveable, impermanent fixture, questioning where the line lies between faithful representation and invented reality.

Rachel graduated from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012 with a BA in Fine Art: Sculpture. She has recently completed a residency at PAPER Gallery in Manchester, and will have a solo exhibition of works that respond to her residency there in the New Year.

Robin Tarbet graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006 and is an artist based in East London. He was awarded The Stanley Picker Fellowship in Fine Art Print at Kingston University in 2006/07, where he continues to work as a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, whilst also being a regular Visiting Lecturer at Norwich University College of Art. Tarbet’s work combines two–dimensional media, photography, printmaking and live film with three-dimensional sculptural assemblages.

Whilst showing in many group exhibitions ranging from the Hayward Gallery to the London Underground network, his work has featured in Blueprint Magazine, and in 2007 he had his first solo show at Outpost Gallery Norwich. Tarbet's ongoing series of live installations entitled 'Monitored Landscape Series' was exhibited as part of EAST International in 2009, and then toured in 2010 to be his first International Solo exhibition at Trafo Gallery in Budapest. Current projects in 2012 include ‘Tomorrow’s World’ residency and exhibition at Manchester Rogue Studios, and a forthcoming solo show as part of the ‘Monitored Landscape Series’ at Black Swan Project Space in Frome.

Robin's practice is concerned with the physical materiality of everyday technology. He approaches familiar consumer products from a wondrous and inquiring perspective. Tarbet assumes the role of a curious folk scientific explorer, which leads him to dismantle, dissect, and distort everyday technologies and appliances.

Aesthetically he examines the architectural and conceptual similarities of the built environment to the increasingly technological yet mysterious worlds within. His work questions the stuff that is concealed on the inside of a computer, or whether there is anything to find behind the façade of the television screen.

As far as searching for answers or technical understanding his approach deliberately adopts the material function of failure, inefficiency, and he utilizes the resistance of the objects in providing any new knowledge that can be applied. Tarbet's aim is not to reveal any secrets, but his curiosity is with uncovering an often eclectic and mysterious collection of real bits and pieces that with few visible moving parts or automated actions, work together to create the products desired function. It is with this real stuff that his own fascination with perceived reality, illusion and the unusual effects of scale and perspective combine. As an artist he substitutes his precise lack of mundane understanding with the notion of play, imagination and the potential for what could be, rather than what is.